Bithumb Review

Bithumb Review by professional Forex trading experts the “ForexSQ” FX trading team, Finding out everything you need to know about the broker in this Bithumb Review.

Bithumb Review

Bithumb is the largest South Korean cryptocurrency exchange by volume and is among the global leaders, according to data of the site Coinmarketcap.com. Reports of South Korean media estimate that Bithumb holds over 75% of the country’s bitcoin market volume, and around 10% of the global trade. Bithumb also holds around 50% of South Korea’s Ether trading volume and is in practice the largest Ether exchange in the world.

In addition to Bitcoin, the exchange offers several of the most popular cryptocurrencies: Ether, Dash, Ether Classic, Litecoin, Dash, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, Zcash, Qtum against the South Korean Won. The instrument list ranks it among the platforms with wider portfolios like Coincheck, Bisq, Bitfinex, Bitstamp and Kraken.

Similarly to the majority of cryptocurrency exchanges, Bithumb does not offer leveraged trading in the tokens, but only spot trading. There are some platforms, like Kraken, GDAX, Okex, Quoinex and Bitfinex who provide the option for trading on margin.

Bithumb is the largest South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. It is not specifically regulated, but presumably, like all platforms operating from within the country, is subject to some oversight from the South Korean Financial Services Commission (FSC). Additionally, it may be subjected to on-site inspections by representatives of the Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC), the National Tax Service (Korean IRS) and the police.

Recently the FSC banned the initial coin offerings (ICOs) in order to safeguard inexperienced investors from potential MLM and Ponzi Schemes, but maintained that the cryptocurrencies are electronic representations of value and not financial products such as securities. The FSC, however, keeps an eye on the platforms and the currency flow through the banks. For the time being cryptocurrencies can be traded on an exchange only if a bank has confirmed the authorization of an account.

According to media reports, in the summer of 2017, Bithumb was subject to a hacker attack. The company maintained that it was not its servers attacked, but the computer of one of its employees. From there the hackers stole the personal data and passwords of nearly 31 800 or 3% of the users and stole 1.2 billion won (a little over $1 million) in altcoins and fiat currencies.

In addition to the spot trading service, Bithumb also provides the money transfer service (for Bitcoins and wons) and an e-wallet for cryptocurrency storage.

Like most cryptocurrency exchanges for spot trading, Bithumb sticks to basics and its trading platform does not have any redundant bells and whistles.

The platform offers three trading options: general trade, easy trade and reserved trade. The general trade is self-explanatory. The easy trade provides the automatic transactions with pre-ordered amount with real time price. Purchase is made in the order from the lower sell amount, and it can change with real time transaction value. The reserved trade places an order at the market price as per the amount the client has requested at the reserved base price.

There is also an order book and an order history.

Methods of payment

As per the local regulations, Bithumb works with fiat currency payments only though a bank account. The deposit is free of charge, while the withdrawal comes with a 1000 won fee. Deposits in cryptocurrencies are free and withdrawals are with a fee of 0.01 ether, dash, litecoin, ether classic and ripple, or 0.0005 bitcoins.

Bithumb does not appear to accept payments with cards, which is quite inconvenient, but there are exchanges who do.

Bithumb is a very big cryptocurrency exchange, which suggests it offers deep liquidity. On the other hand, however, it may attract the unwanted attention of the hackers, as it already did and the clients may suffer. Of course, being so big, and having in mind the Mt. Gox debacle of 2014, the platform would hardly permit a major disaster. Nevertheless, this risk should be kept in mind.

Also, it seems that Bithumb is mostly targeting South Koreans, even though we are not aware of any limitations. On the other hand, however, there are the conversion rates and the international banking transfer fess, which are most likely forbidding and can hardly compensate the relatively low trading fees. There appears also to be a problem with the authentication and withdrawal requests of people residing abroad.